Iran to respond on nuclear deal with West

Iran says it’s ready for constructive talks with world powers. But it will not discuss what it calls its nuclear rights.

The Islamic Republic is due to give its response in Vienna today to a UN-drafted nuclear fuel deal.

Fears about the nature of Iran’s nuclear programme were heightened in September with the disclosure of a once-secret uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom.

The US and other world powers suspect Iran’s nuclear development plans are designed to produce nuclear weapons.

Neither the International Atomic Energy Agency nor Iranian officials have commented on the IAEA inspectors visit this week to the site.

The inspections were aimed at verifying that the reactor was intended to produce peaceful nuclear energy and not warheads.

Under the draft deal Iran would send low enriched uranium abroad for further processing and eventual use in a research reactor.

 

High hopes for Iran nuclear deal

The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, believes it has found the formula that will settle the nuclear standoff between Iran and the international community.

Director and Nobel peace prize winner Mohammed El-Baradei leaves his post next month, and he hopes this will be his legacy.

“I very much hope that people see the big picture, see that this agreement could open the way for a complete normalisation of relations between Iran and the international community,” he said in Vienna.

El-Baradei’s project, which needs the approval of all the nations involved in talks, has initially been presented to four of them: the US, Iran, France and Russia.

It requires Iran to send its low-level enriched uranium to Russia, where it will be boosted to the maximum allowed for civil use, – 19.75 percent – and then sent to France, which will transform it into nuclear piles for use in reactors.

France will then return it to Iran, where it will be used in research facilities mainly for the production of medical isotopes.

One of the sticking points until now had been France’s insistance that Iran exhaust its stockpile, or at least reduce it to a point where making fissile material for warheads would be impossible. That appears to have been taken on board.

Iran will send 1200 kilos of its 1500 kilo stockpile to Russia for enrichment. The 300 kilos left in Iran is way below the 2000 kilos needed to make a bomb, and Iran cannot currently enrich it to the 90 percent weapons-grade level in any case.

The ball is now firmly in the court of the governments concerned.

Larijani: religion rules out nuclear arms

The speaker of the Iranian parliament has ruled out Iran possessing nuclear weapons on religious grounds, the first time Islam has been invoked in the nuclear row.

He told euronews: “Iran is a country that is governed according to religious values. The leader of the Supreme Council issued a fatwa, a religious decree that says having access to weapons of mass destruction is haram, or forbidden. Not only just nuclear, but also chemical and biological weapons.”

By inference, Iran is saying anyone posessing WMDs is damned and will go to hell. The full interview is broadcast on euronews from Friday. go to www.euronews.net/interview for more information.

Iran: Britain denies role in guards attack

Britain’s foreign minister has categorically denied Britain had anything to do with the suicide attack on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards yesterday.

America and Pakistan have also denied accusations they helped the Sunni rebel Jundollah movement carry out the bombing, which killed two of the Guard’s senior commanders and 40 others.

Several senior Iranian figures have said the Iranian security services had proof of foreign involvement, with President Ahmadinejad accusing Pakistan, but today he called instead on Islamabad for closer co-operation in dealing with terrorism, which he called their “common enemy”.

The Jundoullah group is based in the province of Sistan-Baluchistan on the Afghan frontier and it has been mounting increasingly spectacular attacks against the regime in Tehran for a number of years.

Iran says group members are given safe haven in Pakistan and it is sending a delegation to demand the extradition of its leader, Abdolmalek Righi.

Iran executed 13 group members in July.

29 dead in suicide attack on Revolutionary Guards commanders

euronews-A suicide bomber has killed 29 people, including six senior Revolutionary Guards commanders in Iran.

State television says a Sunni rebel group has admitted carrying out the attack which left another 28 people wounded.

Analysts say a rebel group known as Jundollah, which has links to the Taliban in neighbouring Pakistan, is the likely suspect.

The attack took place at the gates of a conference hall in the city of Sarbaz in Sistan-Baluchestan province.

A suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body during a gathering of tribal leaders according to the Iranian television reports.

The Revolutionary Guard is a branch of Iran’s military founded after the Iranian revolution. It is thought to number as many as 120,000 with its own small naval and air arms.

Two high-ranking commanders among the dead were the deputy head of the Guards’ ground forces and the regional commander of the Sistan-Baluchestan province.